


Lamb

by brittlelimbs



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Beating, Bondage, Branding, CEO AU, Dom/sub, Domestic, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), Possessive Behavior, Recreational Drug Use, ben and hux are so wealthy it's ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 19:58:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6534343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/pseuds/brittlelimbs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ben Solo is a CEO with a troubled past, Hux is one of the wealthiest men on Wall Street, and Rey is their Dom.</p><p>AKA The CEO AU nobody asked for. Here ya go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lamb

**Author's Note:**

> HEADS UP: at one point, this fic depicts a physically and emotionally abusive relationship (with an original character). if that's triggering to you, please take care of yourself and don't read!  
> also def not claiming this to be anything more than the most self-indulgent piece of shit i've ever written hahaha i am garbage
> 
> the song for this fic is jungle by drake

Ben knits his brows together, pushing up his glasses and rubbing at the tender, pink indentations left by the nosepieces, trying to subdue his oncoming headache. He hates LAX. It’s a zoo in every sense, save for being able to enjoy actual  _animals_ ; everything about it is much too loud, too messy-busy, too crowded. He always feels rushed, struck with a sense of perpetual tardiness. He’d much preferred to fly out through Burbank, but Jessika, his coordinator, had said this would work out best—no layover. So LAX it was, booked and finalized.

No layover, his ass. This isn’t worth it. He settles back in his seat, foot bouncing a little, trying to make himself stop jangling around as the attendants do their pre-flight checks. He needs to get home, and even after all these years, flying first class always makes him feel just a little uneasy in his own skin. All those worn-thin men, toddler-laden women, glaring at him as they board, envy in their eyes when they see the ridiculous amount of leg room he has to stretch out in (he’s tall,  _okay_?). Or, alternatively,  _eyeing_  him, as in:  _I wanna jump your bones_. When he picks up on that, Ben always tries to keep his eyes on the briefing in his hands, or the copy of the New Yorker he picked up on the way over. He gets looks, a lot, from girls and guys, too, everywhere he goes. One glance at his Bvlgari, the tastefully parted cream collar of his dress-shirt—sometimes just the way he holds his hand around a snifter of cognac—and everything slides south:  _Have I seen you here, before? Do you come here often?_  Even _How much?_  once, straight up. He’d had enough wherewithal to blush at that one.

See, Ben Solo, founder and CEO of Solo Industries, looks good and he knows it.

He used to take advantage of this, a little  _extra_ to sweeten the deal.  _Nudge-nudge, wink-wink,_ cashmere socks, slipped from calfskin penny loafers, skimming lustily around his ankles at business lunches, unseen under the tablecloth. Flirting at the hem of his perfectly tailored slacks. Another bigwig exec giving him the up-down over handshakes, checking out his ass when he leaned long over the boardroom table, searching for this notary or that finely brokered deal.

Guys totally got off on it. Even though it was a little, you know,  _incestuous_ —fucking one of their own, another upper-echelon Armani automaton (no blue blood here, though, something Ben takes pride in). But there was just something deliciously ineffable about taking Ben, another Big Dog, and making him their  _bitch_.

He’d cruised through his mid-twenties that way. Giving head in the men’s room of all the best restaurants in NYC (he’s built up a repertoire now, can tell Masa from Buddakan from Smith & Wollensky’s just by how the tile feels under his knees), being bedded by fatcat investors their gated, gorgeous Napa condos in the same twelve-hour span. Kinda like couch-surfing, only on California Kings, memory-foam monsters with Egyptian cotton sheets. Ping-ponging from hemisphere to hemisphere, racking up frequent-flyer miles almost as quickly as the hefty paychecks going into in his 401(k).

Ben Solo hadn’t quite slept his way to the top of the pharmaceutical industry, but it had been a close thing.

Michael had hated it. Michael Gallagher, of  _the_  Gallaghers. Old money oil barons, all of them, a beautiful nest of vipers that loved the media only twice as much as they loved a good crude market. He’d met their only son at a charity gala for children with cancer, or whatever. Ben noticed him right away; Michael was gorgeous in a tux, fit to eat, and when those sleepy eyes had met Ben’s from over his fluted glass, it might have been chance, or it might have been fate, but whatever it was, that was certainly _it_ : Ben soon found himself tipsily tripping through introductions (a stupid formality; they both knew precisely who the other was), Michael flirting at him from a kitty-corner vantage point. Michael was even more beautiful up close, somehow, and his handshake was wonderfully strong. Also: he was pretty drunk. Swaying, woozy with the trays of mixed drinks circulating through the silken clouds of debutants. But Ben was drunk too, and all at once everything was going from zero to sixty with all the aggression of Ben’s favorite, finely made Bugatti (though there’s no fineness to getting drunkenly jacked off in a shadowy stairwell, and Ben knows this). They’d laughed afterwards, tousled and flushed and still a little drunk with the dirty thrill of what they’d done, and Ben just. Just-- maybe he was burning, or maybe he was falling, endlessly, endlessly, or some other cliché he’d had yet to hear of, there in that marbled stairwell of some fancy hotel. Some Hilton. He didn’t know.

And that was their story: Michael, the winsome son of an oil magnet, and Ben, a promiscuous young professional with a bad case of the black-gold blues.

Michael had known about it coming in, of course. The infidelity, that is. Ben had made it very, earnestly clear on their third date, after they’d ended up having sex on his kitchen island for the second time in as many weeks. Now that they’d started this thing, they had no idea how to stop; he’d looked over at Michael with something akin to terror, because  _oh shit, he was fucking in love, oh Christ_ , and there was absolutely nothing he could do but bite the bullet. Pant into those pink lips, those bliss-crossed eyes:  _I can’t—I can’t be monogamous. It can’t be just you._

And Michael had paused, given that the real thought it deserved. But in the end, he hadn’t balked.

 _Okay. Alright, man._ Then he’d kissed him so soft, so hot, that Ben had just about died with the feeling of it.

Damn, but Ben had loved that Michael. That easy smile, his confidence, his happiness. His exhibitionist streak, a wicked thing that stretched a mile wide; they went to Vegas one time on Ben’s week off,  _Cause you need a vacation, sweetheart_ , and Michael called up a whole roomful of strippers for the sole purpose of having an audience to watch him fuck Ben through the mattress (that weekend still makes Ben turn scarlet). He’d call Ben when he was out in public, too, touring facilities, going to meet-and-greets. His voice all whisky-low, rough and static on the line as the burn of stubble between Ben’s thighs, telling him the dirtiest, sweetest things. Things that left Ben aching, nails biting into the soft meat of his palm as he rushed to the nearest bathroom because _oh Christ he’s gonna come in his pants nownownow—_

 _Come, baby,_ Michael would drawl, just like that, Ben’s iPhone precariously cocked between his ear and shoulder as he caged himself into the stall, hands otherwise occupied. And he would. Always.

Then, somewhere around the half-year mark, Michael started to say:  _Come_ home _, baby,_ instead, and Ben’s heart would break at the sound of it, every time.

 

His hands clench around the armrests as they take off, just a little. Once they reach cruising altitude, he orders an ice water from the sweet, old stewardess, and pops a melatonin. Tries to forget, or not to remember, or something like that.

How that was where things had started to go a little sour.

_Come home, baby._

 

See, Michael had a possessive streak a mile wide, too, as it turned out. Also: drugs. Ben dabbled, but Michael  _delved_ , knew where and what and how to get. Coke, mostly, some Quaaludes, too. Prescription shit on the side. Some of the best sex they ever had was when Michael was on a binge, high for days at a time, everything going white-hot and fast fast fast because Michael could only be a god for just that little length of time. Black nylon cord, gags; he treated Ben was all the roughness he craved, and then some.

And then too much.

 _Tell me you’re mine_ , Michael would whisper into the bruises on Ben’s collarbone. The red-raw burns around his wrists, the scratches, the secret things that he had to hide under the hems and collars and cuffs of finely tailored business-casual.  _Just for me, and me alone._ And Ben would cry  _yes_ when they were in the fantasy, wading neck-deep in a scene, begging for release, but in tandem also knew with certainty:  _I can’t_. Michael was asking for allegiance Ben couldn’t deliver, the caveat, the pithy, unyielding bone. He’d tried cutting out business-trip trysts, but could never manage it for long; always a merger that needed a  _little_ extra nudge in the right direction, or an old partner that had come to expect their pound of flesh. It was inescapable. So Ben gave to them, and to Michael, too, selflessly offering each deep belly laugh, each hungry whimper, yielding every part of himself to the man he loved, and it was not enough. Never would be.

The two of them tried too hard to make the shape of this thing fit into the space that had all the wrong angles for holding it, twisting, warping. Long and bitter weeks of distance, Ben away with work, Michael overburdened with all the heavy baggage of high society, stolen away to auctions or weddings. Interspliced were weekends, spark-brief, decadent days where they fucked, hard and desperate and possessive; things that should’ve been satisfying, once were, but now rode just a little too close to the edge for comfort. Michael’s need reassert himself on Ben’s body, made just a little too real. Michael should’ve broken up with him. Hell, Ben could’ve done it, too, but neither of them did, and that’s how things got fucked.

A trip to Mexico. A baggie of blow. A threat. A tiny, tasteful silver brand, worked onto an enamel hand piece.

‘G,’ reads the raised, white scar tissue on Ben’s left hipbone, and he will never forget the smell of burning flesh that had filled the room when Michael had made it. Impressed his ownership into Ben’s very skin.

Michael kissed the tears from Ben’s cheeks as he’d sobbed, begged— _real_ begging, not the kind Ben loved— for Michael to stop, safeword spent, declarations of confusion and hatred curled up in his throat with the pain. Those eyes were wide, and those eyes were wild, far off, gone to some other place that Michael’d constructed on his own; he was higher than he’d ever been, and Ben was terrified. He’d shouted that he was going to leave, that he needed  _out_ of this fucking crazy thing because Michael had gone too far--

 _If you leave me, Ben. If you leave, ‘m gonna tell the world how much of a whore you really are_ , Michael murmured into the corners of Ben’s eyes, leaning long over his handiwork of coiled knots and pale, clammy vulnerability.  _Everyone’s gonna know, baby. Everybody. That’s why you need this_. Low and soft, like a reassurance to Ben, or maybe to himself. And then he’d pressed his thumb into the bubbling, red-fresh disaster of the burn, and Ben had  _screamed_.

 

That was their story, too: A man who was so used to getting everything he wanted, and the man who yielded to that need in every way, save for the only one that mattered.

 

He’d called his mother from the cramped backseat of a cab on the way to the airport, hours later. It was the first time he’d talked to her in over six years. He was crying. He was alone. He was hurt and on the run and so absolutely, utterly terrified that his body shook with his sobs.  _Mama—_

 

Ben wakes up. His throat hurts. The sleeping pill is making consciousness a slow and arduous process, sucking at his mind like mud, and his head feels heavy, clouded with the old nightmares of the legal shitstorm that had ensued the breakup.

_Slander. Bodily Harm to the plaintiff._

“—re you alright? Sir?”

The stewardess’ face has a folded sort of kindness about it as she leans over him, and he’s vaguely aware of a light hand on his shoulder. She has a gentle southern accent. Texan, maybe. Virginian.

“I—what? Sorry.” Ben shakes his head, jostling her hand away. He clears his throat, tries to grasp reality a little more tightly.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, moving away carefully, as if trying to gentle a spooked animal. “You were, ah,”--she looks around nervously--“well, you were screaming. It was really giving the other passengers quite a fright.”

Ben is suddenly conscious of the fact that everyone in the first-class cabin is looking at him. Businessmen and Hampton moms staring over their seat-backs with morbid abandon, glancing up from their Kindles, hands frozen around their single-serving cups of scotch. Coddled teenagers craning their necks to rake their eyes across Ben, earbuds dangling from one ear. First-class freak show, more entertaining than any episode of _Transparent_ ever could be.

 

_Look how fucked up you are. Look, Ben._

 

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” he says, finally. What else is there to do, to say. He’s two steps forwards and one step back, still halfway in that past.

“If you require any further assistance, sir—“

“No, I’m alright, thanks.” He smiles tightly up at her, before firmly gluing his eyes to the window. There’s a pause before he hears her kitten heels finally thump away down the carpeted aisle.

The pink and dusky clouds are an unsatisfactory distraction, and his bones are aching with embarrassment, exhaustion, and need. Michael’s voice is still echoing inside his head; he pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezes his eyes shut, trying to clear himself of his old ghosts.

He needs her. He needs  _them_.

There’s a chime, and Ben blinks; they’re descending, says the captain.

It’s quite possibly the best thing he’s heard anyone say today.

 

Deplaning and baggage claim are both nightmares in their own right, but soon Ben is out the door, quickly finding the company car idling at the pickup queue. A black Mercedes, clearly Hux’s. “Welcome home, sir,” the driver says curtly as she helps Ben with his suitcase, hefting it carefully into the trunk before ushering him into the back seat.

“Thank you.” Even he can tell how absent his voice sounds; his mind is already miles away, beyond the coming thirty-minute slog through rush-hour congestion, the follow-up emails already waiting in his inbox, the plush, dark interior of the car.

His pocket buzzes, and he paws into his interior breast pocket with excited hands, unlocks his phone. It’s a text.  _Rey._

_you didn’t tell me you’d landed_

And then another, piling in on top of the first with a _ping_  as Ben watches:

_a girl might worry_

Finally:

_hux missed you_

Ben shivers. Right. It’s been a long two weeks, and he’s  _aching_  to be home.

 

He’s already half-hard by the time he’s in the elevator of Hux’s apartment building, breezing past the front desk (to another round of  _welcome back’s_ ) scanning the keycard in his wallet to access the top floor. It would be pathetic, if it wasn’t so damn impossible for Ben to think of anything but what lies in wait for him, twenty stories up. Hux’s city home is a penthouse, of course, and, not for the first time, Ben curses the long minutes it takes to go all the way to the top, fidgeting as he watches the city rush by through Plexiglas and steel. An old grouse; Ben’s estate out east is a modest two floors, and he’s mentioned to Hux repeatedly that the three of them could do _perfectly_  well there, with only one flight of stairs to climb between them _._ One day, perhaps, they’ll move, though the likelihood of hell freezing over before Hux backs down is quite plausible, too.

The chrome doors open with a pleasantly familiar  _ding_ , and as he steps out into the carpeted stretch of entryway, Ben can feel his palms start to sweat. His fingers tremble, just a little, while he keys the door, slips inside the foyer.

The elevator trip might be unnecessarily long, but Ben fully, if grudgingly, admits: Hux has taste. His penthouse is a sprawling thing, all light and airy floor-to-ceiling windows, dark oak flooring, white walls that should seem austere but lend the place a dreamy quality, instead. Open concept floor-plan or whatever, kitchen flowing into living flowing into dining. Ben tends to lean a little more minimalist—Hux has a thing for Japanese woodblock print, for post-impressionists—but this space reflects its owner in every square foot: carefully cultivated, and worth millions.

He remembers the first time he’d walked through this door, almost two years ago, now, back when this thing was new. When Hux was just an old friend, an occasional fuck, an investment banker turned shoulder to cry on. He’d caged himself in on that drizzly March afternoon, tucked himself onto Hux’s couch and refused to move, feeling stiff enough to be a piece of furniture himself. He was more scar tissue than person at that point, Hux would tell him later, the red-rawness of the breakup set rigidly into a great, aching mass (that thing on his hip, though, that had yet to fully blister over). A six month stint where he didn’t dare to take a breath, strung taught enough that he might’ve shattered into a million pieces at any given moment. Holding, waiting to self-destruct.

But he didn’t. The first time he’d visited was hard, and the second time was harder still, but he miraculously didn’t explode, holding himself together. Eventually, he let himself be held, too: two hands, then four;  _this is Rey, Ben. She’s good at what she does. I’ve come to like her quite a lot._

She was.

This tiny woman—girl, really-- learned him in those weeks. He was mired in this weird limbo, so in hate with his own body (Ben the freak, Ben the sub, Ben the branded), but she knew how to work him just right, make him pliant again.

Ben breathes in, tipping back gently against closing door, and their home smells like pine, like coffee, but also more than that: their home smells like learning how to be clay. How to be whole again.

It feels good to start his homecoming ablutions, a ritual he knows well and that he and Hux abide by in turn; Rey has expectations, little rules that they take pleasure in both upholding and breaking. First: shoes. Those get neatly set aside, slotted between Hux’s well-worn horsebit loafers and Rey’s favorite pair of converse. Then the suitcase goes, too, briefcase along with it, and Ben allows himself a little sigh of relief; there goes all of the fucking meaningless, asinine baggage of his white-collar life, tucked safely away for later reckoning behind the umbrella stand. He quivers, shucking free of himself with an eager, played-out clumsiness that leaves his heart pounding against his ribs, but it’s alright. It’s comforting, it’s home. Something so simple as the feeling of socked feet on the hardwood, and  _shit,_  but business trips are so fucking hard, now, being deprived of two damn weeks to see and touch and taste—

She’s sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table. She looks soft and small in nothing but one of Hux’s old dress shirts, hair let down into gentle curls across her shoulders, and Ben’s favorite belt laid across her lap like a black, oily snake.

He has never seen anything so lovely before in his life.

She doesn’t look up from her phone, still texting rapidly, so Ben carefully, patiently, tucks away his buzzing excitement and steps closer. No words, no touches (though oh, how desperately he _wants_ ), simply content to wait for instruction. Absently, he notices the groceries on the kitchen island, bags of this or that for he or Hux to whip up later, depending on who’s feeling particularly enthusiastic. There’s an empty champagne bucket, too, and Ben doesn’t partake anymore, but he quakes in anticipation; nothing beats a little post welcome-home celebration (Hux drunk is incredible, Rey drunk is even better).

Home is good. It’s so good.

“Bedroom.”

Her voice is clear and steady, and she’s still looking down at the phone in her tiny hands, preoccupied, but Ben goes a little weak at the knees. Remembers, suddenly, how much that voice carries for him.

“Strip, then on your knees. Wait for me.”

Oh fuck, yeah, did he miss it. He resists the urge to palm himself through his slacks, and croaks “Glasses?” instead, because that’s the one question he’s allowed. He sounds small in comparison. Pitiful, almost.

“Take them off.”

He nods, and heads off to the master bedroom. He isn’t quite vibrating with pleasure, but it’s a close thing.

 

He nearly gasps when he enters, though he’d half expected that this was what he’d find; this isn’t the first time he’s come home to Hux like this, nor will it be the last. His boyfriend is naked, bound, and completely out of it, laid gently across the duvet of their bed as if he were some fucking prized piece of jewelry, pale pearlescence couched on a velvet cushion. He’s leaking across his belly, pink-flushed, full and desperate, and as Ben moves closer to skate a hand over his flank, he sees the marks of a thorough beating written all across the soft swell of his ass, peppering his upper thighs.

Clearly, Ben’s return had interrupted something. Perhaps he _should’ve_  texted.

Hux shivers as Ben’s fingers skim across his side,  _tick-tick-tick_  along his ribs, but makes no move to speak or to acknowledge him.

 

In the past year or so, Ben has learned a great many things, not the least of which is this: Brendol Hux is an odd one. While Ben so willingly, lovingly goes belly up with complete and utter certainty, has yielded in bed since he knew what sexuality  _was_ , Hux goes completely countercurrent. His blood runs with authority, through and through; in his submissiveness, he has to be suggested. He has to be  _nudged_ , sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Ben’s watched Rey work with him before, privy to how she strips away that stubbornness, that cunning power, and reveals the trembling, mewling thing beneath. Hux will fight her to the very end some days, anger and need building and building until he’s cresting, crashing and breaking down to some deep, warm place that leaves him speechless, soft and pliant. It’s intense for all parties, to say the least; watching one of the wealthiest bankers on Wall Street roll over and beg might just one of the hottest things it’s possible to experience.

He traces Hux’s side again before stepping away to shrug out of his suit jacket. Undressing for Rey is a weird and wonderful ritual in its own right; by the time he’s fiddling with his belt, slipping his slacks down his thighs, he’s already fully hard and leaking into his boxer-briefs, so ridiculously aroused that he’s half-ready to jump out of his own flushed skin. But everything is folded and neatly put away, or hung up in their closet—this is more for Hux than for her, but Ben thinks the practice adds to the holiness of this, anyways.

He takes off his glasses, folding in the temples and neatly placing them on the bedside table. The world goes blurry-soft, all warm grey and and neutral, save for the pale pool of Hux.

Then there’s nothing to do but kneel down at the foot of their bed, grasp his hands gently behind his back, and wait.

It might be minutes, it might be hours; his adrenaline-spiked heartbeat starts to slow as time slogs by at this warping, limbo pace. He closes his eyes, eventually, feels the ache of his cock against his belly, the plushness of the thick pile carpeting under his knees. Hux’s breathing is quiet, but comforting.

A strange pair, they are. Sort of like that that old saying,  _a wolf in sheep’s clothing,_  but fucked with, inverted completely on its head. They’re two of the biggest wolves in America; Ben has bank accounts in four different countries, and Hux has an island, but here’s the truth of it: Rey’s feet are padding across their bedroom floor, and Ben knows that they would both burn every bank-insured dollar they own, just for that sound.

“Heya, baby. Did you miss me?”

He did. He says so. He doesn’t open his eyes just yet, choosing instead to savor the warmth of her body heat as she moves closer, hooks a hand in his long, dark hair. Ben breathes out shakily; he can smell her now, too. It’s wonderful. She tips his head back and he goes willingly, finally looking up to her smiling face. Rey looks—happy. She skates a long line from his hairline to jawbone, just the barest little touch that makes Ben  _shiver_ , then skips over, plucks gently at his lower lip.

“Show me.”

All at once he’s bereft of her touch, though he can make no move to follow her; she’s sitting at the edge of the bed, spreading her knees wide, and _yes_ , Ben knows precisely how to follow orders, how to please, and he’s getting ludicrously harder with the knowledge of how very, very good he’ll be.

“C’mere, babe.”

Permission. He crawls the few feet forwards, makes to peel back the layer flimsy cotton that lies between him and—

“Stop, Ben.”

He stops instantly. Not a hairsbreadth of movement, save for the slow rise an fall of his belly with his breathing. Her eyes narrow, just a tiny fraction that Ben knows means trouble, and her mouth twists a little, slanting all cocky (Michael was like this once, when it was good. He thinks he might be okay with that, though).

“No hands.”

But he's not okay with this.

Ben outright whines, part annoyance, part delight. It’s so much less efficient this way; he could be buried in that hot, soft space between her legs already, eating her out like he’s starving for it, because he  _is_. Showing her every way he loves her and needs her with his lips, his tongue and teeth. But also: _oh fuck okay okay he can do this_.

Ignoring the ache of his cock, he grips his wrist behind his back again, insinuating himself a little more closely into the cradle of her legs. He almost laughs: here he is, every part the lost lamb coming back to the fold, hooked home between calloused heels. But he gingerly grips the hem of the shirt between his teeth, instead, chins up and over her belly to draw the fabric away. It’s a well-washed thing, worn-soft and Tattersall and smelling of strongly Hux; their two scents tangle as she hikes up her hips, letting him slip it up far enough that he has a little room to work, and the combination of both of them is so heady that Ben feels dizzy with it. Hux grunts. They both look up: she’s jostled into him a bit, the crown of her head butting into his stomach, and Rey laughs.

“Hey there,” she says, wriggling up a little further, tipping her head sideways to place a sweet, quick kiss to the head of Hux’s drooling cock. “Didn’t think I forgot about you, did you?” He moans again, and Ben watches as Rey tries her very best to nuzzle Hux’s stomach, though her legs are still wrapped around Ben’s waist, now, and multitasking like that is a bit of a challenge. Finally she gives up and simply rests her head on Hux’s abs, grinning up at Ben, moving gently with Hux’s steady breathing. She’s radiant with effort, valiant and scrappy in her love, and all of this moment is just so brilliantly, utterly  _Rey_  that Ben breathlessly drops the shirt.

Rey sees this, Rey knows.

“My boys,” she says, reaching up to pinch Ben’s earlobe with one hand, lazily dancing her fingers across Hux’s thigh with the other. She’s grasping both of them at once, the same way the earth roots the sea and sky, or something with that kind of poetry, and suddenly Ben thinks of the plane.

The feeling of flying, untethered, living this fucking Chuck Palahnuick style single-serving life above thirty thousand feet, racing over oceans to uncertain ends. Forever hovering, indecisive and overwhelmed with an embarrassment that sticks under his ribs just right, that makes his old, accumulated scars sting with shame. He thinks of the way they’d all looked at him; how they didn’t know, but they _knew_  all the same. He thinks of terrible, awesome dream that was Michael.  

And then Rey is twisting her fingers in his hair, bringing him back to the arms of the earth, and he thinks:  _okay_.

“Did you miss me?” She asks again, with eyes that are far too sharp for her own good. He nods. That’s right: he has alighted, here, in this place. In this bed, where Hux has been made into a piece of artistry, and Rey is slowly, surely tucking her legs wide.

“Beg.”

So he lowers down on shaking legs, because suddenly gravity is such a wonderful burden, and lifts her knees gently onto his shoulders. “Please,” he’s saying, though it’s somewhere far away; the brand is burning like a beacon on his hip, a wide and all encompassing sort of pain, and there it is: forever a footnote in the story of the young professional, or the unwilling man, or whatever nameless thing he might title himself as, now.

But he’s murmuring a deep and secret mantra into the golden fuzz dusted along Rey’s thighs, and he knows, now, that maybe it will always burn.

Maybe that’s alright, too, so long as he has this.

“ _Please_ ,” he says again, whispering into the heat of her the same way one might pray for benediction. He feels lightheaded, though he doesn’t figure out why right away; he’s just now remembered this feeling. 

He's on his knees, hers in his entirety. For the first time in a very long while, Ben Solo is  _grounded_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> come join me at floatin-on-bespin.tumblr.com so we can talk about millionaire hux's interior decorating tastes tbh
> 
> comments always so welcome :)


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